A Thin Red Thread
by hannahroar
Summary: "An invisible red thread connects those destined to meet, regardless of time, place, or circumstances. The thread may stretch or tangle, but never break." - Ancient Chinese Proverb
1. A Thin Red Thread

_"An invisible red thread connects those destined to meet, regardless of time, place, or circumstances. The thread may stretch or tangle, but never break." -_ _Ancient Chinese Proverb_

_This is a story about Sherlock Holmes. John Watson does not appear in person until the very end, so I'm sorry if that puts some of you off. There are hints of John throughout as the story builds, to keep us all sane, but this is a story about Sherlock - about his life, and about his thin red thread. Beta'd by the lovely RainDancer16, who helped keep me together and beat out this story._

_(This work can now be found on AO3! archiveofourown(.)org/works/373088)  
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><p>The world is full of red.<p>

Red threads, everywhere, connecting everyone. One person to another.

It is believed the red thread appears sometime after the first few days of birth, always on the left ring finger. For some, whose connected will be younger, the thread won't appear until the other is born. Young children are fascinated when the thread is explained to them, and many spend free afternoons following their threads as far as they can before they tire, or their mother calls them to dinner.

When people are fortunate enough to meet their connected, the connection is never challenged. It is not uncommon to see two men or two women connected, or people of different social classes or races. Some people cross oceans and learn new languages to be with the person on the other end of their thread. Then of course, there is the 'traditional' match, between a man and a woman.

Some people spend all of their time following their threads searching for who they are connected to. It isn't uncommon to see men and women, young and old, staring at their left ring finger and onward, analyzing the space, following wherever it may lead. Others decide to wait, to find their connected when it's mean to be.

However, waiting can have consequences. Waiting means running the risk of watching your thread turn black. Black means death. It is not uncommon to see someone fall to the ground, clutching the space before them, with tears running down their face. They say nothing feels worse than watching your thread turn black, especially when you've never seen who is on the other end. Those left behind are usually found at the funeral, in the back, the most distraught of all.

Sometimes, if one is very lucky, a new thread will appear in the place of the black one.

The research behind these threads is extensive, but science can't seem to find any answers. Everyone knows they just appear, and can only be seen by the people the thread connects. They can tighten and tangle, grow longer or shorter, but they cannot be broken.

For Sherlock Holmes, the matter of his red thread was a complicated one.

Often, when he was not yet ten years old, he would sit and watch his thread move during the day, imagining what the person on the other end was doing. At night, he would look at it, taut and still and bright in the darkness, and imagine his connected sleeping, or reading, or perhaps watching their own end of the thread.

"Your eyes are going to fall out if you stare at that thread any longer." Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock's older brother, would often warn him. "It will happen when it is supposed to."

"Just because you don't want to see who is on the other end of yours…" Sherlock grumbled in response. "I just want to know who it is. Is it a boy or a girl? Are they tall? Short? Do they live in London? Do they even live in England? Would they mind me reading my books aloud?" Sherlock always had questions like these. Even at ten, he wanted to know everything.

When Sherlock reached his teen years he pushed the thread to the back of his mind. There were more important things to think about, like molecular structures and the way people's faces moved when they lied. Sherlock, lacking any sort of verbal filter, would call people on their faults, catch people when they lied, and spew unwanted information about a subject. People began calling him names.

Freak.

Know it all.

Sherlock tried to ignore these remarks. His classmates were beneath him. But there was a voice in the back of his mind that kept telling Sherlock his connected would think the same thing. That he would be rejected. He would have deleted his thread altogether but that is hard to do when it's tied around your left ring finger.

"It's quite a shame, I rather miss you puzzling over your thread when you were younger," Mycroft teased over the phone. He was away at university. "I feel if you were to meet your connected tomorrow, you would brush past them in favor of solving a mystery."

"Oh, and you wouldn't do the same if it meant you could worm your way into the government?" Sherlock shot back, his eyes settling on the thin red thread on his left ring finger. The circle was perfect, no knot or bow, just a loop and a perfectly connected line coming off of it. His eyes followed it until it hit the wall, passing through to where he could not see it.

"Dear brother, I have just accepted that we will meet when we will, if we ever do." Mycroft's voice was clipped and sharp, the teasing tone now gone. "It is not who I am to follow this thread to its end, and it never was. But I worry about you. There was a time you would have sailed across the earth, to the moon, and then back to find whoever was on the end of that thread."

"Well, I grew up." _And I don't need to find someone who will hate me, _Sherlock didn't add.

"You're fourteen, I hardly think that's _grown__up_." Sherlock could practically hear his brother's eyes rolling.

"I've found more important things I'd rather focus on. For example, there's this case of a boy who drowned. I think it might have been foul play." Sherlock clenched his left hand, tearing his eyes away from the thread.

"Yes, Mummy told me you were meddling…Well…I see I cannot get through to you. I'll be home for Christmas."

When Sherlock decided to attend university to further his studies, he had more time to be distracted by the subject of threads. He'd seen many people passing each other on campus stop and stare at one another before moving close, entwining their left hands as if realizing they just found everything they had been searching for in the world. To see your thread reduced to the smallest link between you and your connected is said to be like having life breathed into you for the first time.

Everyone had the same look when they found their connected: lights in their eyes, a flush on their cheeks. Their mouths part ever so slightly, and their chests stop moving from the lack of breathing. It is the perfect picture of 'awestruck.' Though it's common courtesy to give two people their privacy when they first connect with each other, for some bystanders, it's hard to look away. Some reminisce about when they found their connected, others dream of when they will find theirs.

Sherlock found himself studying people when not focusing on academics. He would gather information about how people acted just after they came upon their connected. He would take notes on the behaviour of those who have just witnessed their thread turning black. He would question people about whether they had found theirs, if they were looking, if they were waiting, if they had given up.

When Mycroft questioned his actions he claimed it was just research. Mycroft assumed, quite rightly, it was actually so Sherlock would not think about his own thread.

When Sherlock was in his later college years, he acted as if he didn't have a thread at all. He had begun to fear that if he ever did meet the person on the other end of his thread, they wouldn't accept him. Who would? He talked out-loud; sometimes he didn't talk for days. He played violin at three in the morning, much to the chagrin of his neighbors. He had staring contests with a skull he nicked from the pre-med department. To most, he was a freak. A weirdo. That unnerving smart kid in the back of the classroom.

"Don't talk to him, he'll insult you."

"Don't let him see you, he'll know your whole life story."

"He thinks he's better than everyone else."

Well, of course he did. He _was_ better than everyone else. Everyone else was dull. Boring. Stupid. They didn't see. Anything! It wasn't his fault he could notice details most people couldn't. He wasn't insulting, he was just telling the truth.

Not far into his Junior year, Sherlock met a boy named Sebastian who also said he had no thread. To Sherlock, who knew this was a lie (he had seen Sebastian staring at his ring finger three days before they officially introduced themselves to each other), this was the perfect opportunity to forget about the red burden on his left hand. So he took advantage of Sebastian.

They accompanied each other to parties. They had dinner together in each other's dorm rooms. They drank too much wine and made out often. Sherlock had to act quite a lot like a normal person for fear of driving Sebastian away, but the distraction was worth it.

At times, he even forgot about the thread that fit snugly on his left ring finger. But every night, after Sebastian went home, after they didn't sleep together, Sherlock would lay on his bed with his left arm outstretched, his fingers splayed. He would take note of which direction his thread was pointed. It was usually pointed to the South somewhere. He didn't know if this meant Southern England or Southern Europe. There was the possibility his connected was in France or even Africa somewhere. His pessimistic nature convinced him he was connected to a Spaniard who refused to leave home.

Sherlock and Sebastian stayed together for about a year. Sebastian grew used to Sherlock's quirks and put up with Sherlock's refusals of sex. Sherlock appreciated the company. The distraction. But things turned over sideways one night after some particularly heavy drinking.

"Sherlock, darling. It's been a year. Don't you think we've waited long enough?" Sebastian was lazily trying to unbutton Sherlock's blue silk shirt from his position next to Sherlock on the bed.

"Don't call me darling. You know I hate it." Sherlock said absently as he grabbed Sebastian's hand and pulled it to aside to get his fingers away from the buttons.

"You didn't answer my question." Sebastian said, disappointment evident on his face.

"And that, Sebastian, should be all the answer you need." Sherlock lifted his free hand and brushed the fringe out his eyes. Sebastian, ignoring the hint, lifted himself over his partner, brushing soft kisses to Sherlock's throat. Sherlock groaned, letting Sebastian kiss him, but batting away wandering hands from buttons and flies.

"But Sherly, darling. I want you." Sherlock could feel Sebastian smiling into the crook of his neck as he said this. He rolled his eyes at the nickname.

"Don't. Call me Sherly. I know ways to kill you that could be made to look like an accident." The kisses stopped momentarily, only to be replaced by a clever tongue tracing a vein up Sherlock's throat and ending with a nip just behind his ear.

Sherlock let Sebastian do as he pleased for a while, kissing back when his lips met Sherlock's own, keeping careful hold of the hips hovering above him. Then a hand slipped between his legs and he tensed, his hands gripping so hard,bruised dots would appear on Sebastian's skin the next day.

"Sebastian..." he gritted out, hoping the edge to his voice would be all that was needed to remove the unwanted hand.

But Sebastian just cupped his hand, running his palm over Sherlock's sex in a greedy manner. Sherlock wasn't one for second warnings, and, with surprising strength, flipped Sebastian onto his side. Sebastian's hand fell away in surprise. Sherlock sat up, avoiding looking his partner in the eye.

"Sherlock, what is your problem?" Sebastian was angry.

"I don't have a problem. You do." Sherlock still refused to look at Sebastian as he stood to cross the room and sit on the couch. "I told you no."

"Bloody hell, Sher, what's the big deal? It's just sex." Sebastian stood as well, his voice agitated. Sherlock sensed something was going wrong, something not according to Sebastian's plan.

"Sex isn't important. I don't need it for a relationship. Ours was fine without it." Was. Sherlock knew it would end tonight.

"What I don't understand is why you're so fixed on it." Sherlock never saw sex appeal in Sebastian. Mainly because he knew he wasn't his connected, but also because on the off chance he did meet his connected… he didn't want to ruin things.

"Goddammit, Sherlock. Everything is just about you, all the time." Sebastian huffed as he rooted around the room for his shoes. "What you want, what you need. You don't care about anyone else."

Sherlock was silent. He did care about others. Perhaps not as much as he should, but he did. He cared about his mother. He cared about Mycroft, in his own way. And he cared about his connected, who was still located in the South somewhere. But at this instant, he no longer cared for Sebastian Wilkes. He hadn't really cared for him properly anyway. He was just a distraction.

"Jesus, you really are just a freak…" The words caused Sherlock's head to snap towards the man who spoke them, who was walking towards the door with a venomous look on his face.

"You've never said that before. Freak." No particular emotion. Just stating a fact. He'd already deleted any sort of connection to the man, so it wasn't as biting as it should have been.

"Yeah, well, I was trying to win a bet." Sherlock's brow knitted, and Sebastian laughed. "Who can bed the freak in a year, that was it. I got my whole Business Ethics class running a pool. Looks like some folks will be making it big tomorrow. Jesus."

"I was just a bet." If Sherlock was hurt, he didn't let it show. "It seems you are the fool here, Sebastian. To think you could win…"

"Fuck, Sherlock. Get over yourself. You're nothing special. I'm not surprised you don't have a thread. There's no one unfortunate enough to be connected to you." And with that Sebastian strode out of the apartment and slammed the door after him. Sherlock remained on the couch, his fingers steepled under his chin, dwelling on those last words. He didn't move for two days.

Sherlock had no friends. He had no one to talk to, nor did he want to talk. He slept less than normal, and only ate when the pain got too bad to concentrate. When he wasn't studying, he looked up cold cases and attempted to solve them. He met unsavory people along the way, homeless men and women who could see things and find out things other, more upstanding citizens, couldn't. One particularly slimy contact eventually introduced Sherlock to the wonders of Cocaine.

With Cocaine, Sherlock could escape the boredom that seeped in between studies and cases. His mind was constantly working, spinning, exploring. Most importantly, when Sherlock had Cocaine, he had no red thread. He couldn't see it. It was bliss. He didn't have to worry about his connected rejecting him, because he was connected to Cocaine, and Cocaine would never let him go. He didn't have to worry about watching his thread turn black, because Cocaine could not die. The words Sebastian Wilkes said never existed.

When Sherlock finished school he moved to London. Mycroft set up a flat for him, and Sherlock promptly fused to the couch for a week and a half, ignoring the phone. Mycroft finally strode into the flat himself carrying a large stack of cases that people would be willing to pay Sherlock to solve. The elder Holmes didn't say a word, just grimaced at Sherlock, left the stack on the table, and turned on his heel. When Mycroft had finally entered the government four years prior he had focused his attention on rising up to be all but the Queen, and his and Sherlock's relationship had withered to almost nothing. It was a great brotherly gesture for him to even show up at Sherlock's flat.

Sherlock made quick work of those cases, and began again his college hobby of solving cold cases that he requested from Scotland Yard. He established another Homeless Network, more extensive than before. The underground drug scene in London ensured it wasn't hard to keep up with his Cocaine, and he spent most of his time high. He worked from home, ordered take out whenever he felt the need to eat, and generally kept out of contact with people. He was content, and in the haze of cases and Cocaine, Sherlock could forget about his thread.

Eight months after Sherlock left school, he was looking into a case involving a house fire. The house was still empty, burned and wrecked, and had never been rebuilt. He deduced arson just based on statements, and wanted a better look at the house to make sure. Officer Greg Lestrade took one look at the young man from his place in the lobby of New Scotland Yard, however, before grabbing Sherlock's elbow and wheeling him to a chair. Sherlock had underestimated how frightening he looked - tall, unnervingly thin, hair grown down to his chin, and sunken in eyes whose pupils were blown as wide as his irises. Amidst Sherlock's babbling about the crime scene, Greg managed to get his name, enter it into a system, make a phone call, and load him up into a car. When Sherlock became aware of what was happening he figured he was being taken to Mycroft's and cursed loudly, but remained slumped in his place on the hard plastic seat of the car.

When they reached Mycroft's place, Sherlock allowed himself to be pulled from the car and lead up the walk to the stately town home while the Officer knocked on the door. Sherlock kept his eyes trained on the man with the iron grip on his elbow. Lestrade was very obviously avoiding Sherlock's gaze, ready to just dump him and be off back to the Yard.

But then the door was open and Mycroft was there. If Sherlock hadn't been high as a kite he would have witnessed the other two men lock eyes and raise their left hands, but he was stumbling into the house and up the stairs to the guest room as soon as the door was open.

Sherlock stayed with Mycroft after that. He caught glimpses of Greg when he ventured out of his room once in a while to escape the shrinking walls, but spoke not a word to him or Mycroft. He deduced the second time he saw the officer sitting on the couch chatting with Mycroft that the two were connected. The first time was only a glimpse as Sherlock was venturing out for water and Mycroft hurried him away so the two connected's could have privacy. When Sherlock was thinking clearly he realized he was a little jealous of Mycroft. Mycroft never expressed an interest in his thread, and here he was, connected, and probably a little more than chuffed about it. It wasn't as if Sherlock was actively seeking his own connected, but he thought maybe he would have met his before his brother did.

Sherlock's daily activities included vomiting into a bucket, forcing down soup, and staring at the thread that was slowly becoming more visible. He hadn't seen it in years, since college. Since before Cocaine. He was secretly glad it was still red.

Three months into Sherlock's detox Greg began forcing solid food down his throat. Greg, rather than Mycroft, because Mycroft wanted to teach Sherlock a lesson while Greg felt sorry for the poor sod. Sherlock didn't breathe fresh air for ten months. When both Holmes brothers and Greg were sure Sherlock wouldn't relapse, Sherlock returned to his flat on Gower Street. Greg started inviting Sherlock to work on various cases as a favor to Mycroft and to keep the kid too busy to even think about using again.

The years pass on. Sherlock spends his days staring at his thread, watching it move through various acute angles in the Southwest before making a great sweeping arc to the Southeast, where it moved very little for quite some time. He joined Greg, who had been promoted to Detective Inspector and who had also moved in with Mycroft, on more and more cases and set up a private consulting practice via website to make money. He made contacts inside St. Bartholomew's hospital to help with his research. He was doing well.

It was the beginning of September, and Sherlock was thirty-three when he moved to his new flat on Baker Street. He wanted to break his dependence from Mycroft, who was still helping him pay for the too-posh flat on Gower Street, and found refuge in the quaint little flat owned by Mrs. Hudson, for whom he had helped settle a case once in Florida. She agreed to let him pay half rent until he found a flat mate as thanks for his help, and dithered over him as much as she could, making biscuits and tea and forcing him to eat.

Several weeks before Christmas, Sherlock was spending a long night inside the lab at the hospital testing the effects of different corrosive solutions on teeth for a private case. He was waiting for a test to finish and was staring at his thread when it suddenly, slowly, began arching Northwest. Towards London, he figured, based off the angle. London. Where Sherlock was. He abandoned his tests in favor of sitting on the lab floor and tracking the thread's progress for about seven hours, until he was sure whoever was on the other end was in London. Time and angle put the beginning of the path somewhere in Afghanistan. A soldier.

Sherlock was found the next morning by Molly Hooper, who was a little bit startled, and a little bit more worried, to find the Consulting Detective on the floor, his knees drawn up to his chest, staring at his thread as it moved around in a much wider scope than it had for several years. He quietly excused himself, leaving Molly gaping after him and the corroded teeth in their test tubes, and retreated to the safety of 221B.

For three days, Sherlock ignored calls from Greg (four about a case, and three about dinner on Saturday), refused to eat, and did absolutely nothing but stare at his thread, considering where in London his connected might be. He had nothing to go on for distance, just direction, and his brain was a flurry of possible locations. It took both Mycroft and Greg pounding down his door (Greg, of course, doing the pounding; Mycroft was there against his will) for Sherlock to tear his eyes away from the red.

"Sherlock, you can't just keep staring at that thread. Do something about it. Go and find whoever's on the other end." Greg was the romantic in the Lestrade-Holmes relationship, and would of course be the one to encourage such a notion.

"No." Sherlock stated simply. He did not say _I know my connected will hate me._ Nor did he say _I'm afraid of being rejected._ Because those were truths he wouldn't even let himself believe.

"Well, if you aren't going to do that, at least get off your arse and help me out with my case. Be productive. I'm not going to have to put a watch on you, am I?" Sherlock caught Greg's reference to his drug problems in the past. His brow twitched, but Sherlock remained silent for a few moments.

"If the mud has traces of iron in it, the brother is your killer." With that, he grabbed his violin from the sofa and slunk away to his bedroom. He heard Mycroft calling something about the Saturday dinner, but it was lost in the first pull of the bow.

It took Sherlock another week to emerge from his flat and continue living the life he had built up before it was disrupted. Whenever he wasn't actively researching or working on a case, his eyes stay trained on the red thread connected to his left ringer. He would make assumptions, something he _never_ did, on where his connected might be.

Now they're at the supermarket, perhaps.

Probably sitting in their flat, judging by lack of movement for several hours.

A stroll in the park?

He would wonder if the person on the other end watched their thread. He would wonder why they didn't come find him. Sherlock knew his own reasons, but not his connected's. Maybe they didn't want to be found either.

The New Year came and went, and the third in a string of 'serial suicides' occurred. Sherlock had a blase interest in these cases but was more worried about finding a missing ring that could convict a kidnapper, as well as finding a flatmate - Mrs. Hudson was getting a little fussy over the rent, and his private consulting wasn't quite making ends meet. He absently shared this information with one of those doctors that worked in Barts one morning. Was it Stamford or Sutherland? But Sherlock was honestly paying more attention to dirt samples to care whether Stamford or Sutherland had taken an interest in his living situation.

Sherlock was just re-running a few tests, face stuck to the microscope, when he heard the doors open to the lab. The heavy footfalls suggested Stamford, as Sutherland was quite on the small side. The extra pair of footsteps suggested Stamford brought a potential flatmate.

"Mike, I need to borrow your phone. Mine doesn't have any signal down here." Sherlock carelessly extended his left hand, palm up, eyes still trained on the magnified image of bacteria. The sharp intake of breath from someone who was obviously not Mike Stamford forced him to reluctantly lift his eyes from the scope. What he saw took his own breath away.

Before him was a man very obviously returned recently from war, possibly Iraq, but most likely Afghanistan, with his right hand on a wooden cane, and his left outstretched before him. His eyes were wide, his cheeks were beginning to flush, and his breathing was quick and shallow. Sherlock looked at the man's left hand, at the red thread tied around his left ring finger, and followed it the whole ten feet across the room to his own left ring finger.

And it was as if life was being breathed into him for the first time.

He stared at the former soldier, taking in everything about his appearance: Blue eyes, dishwater blonde hair, not too tall - _or too short, _he thought with a hidden smirk - plenty of muscle, psychosomatic limp, ghastly plaid shirt, determined face. Of all the possibilities of who could have been on the other end of his thread, he never thought it would be this combination. A former soldier. A doctor.

"John. John Watson." And John Watson was making his way over towards Sherlock and Mike Stamford was leaving the room quietly and Sherlock was struck paralyzed and didn't know what to do. He had prepared to never meet who was on the other end of his thread. He had prepared to see his connected take one look and go running. He hadn't prepared for this. For an army doctor with a small smile on his face and terrible taste in shirts to be coming right at him, as if Sherlock had been everything he had been searching for in the world. But that didn't matter anymore.

"Sherlock Holmes." Then each man clasped the other's left hand, the thin red thread almost nothing outside of pulse against pulse, and the world made sense, and Sherlock knew, somehow, he could be happy with this John Watson.

THE END ?


	2. A Breach of Red

Part 2 of the Red Thread series, this time John's story.

As before, this is a story about John, and Sherlock won't show his curly head until the end.

Trigger Warnings for suicide attempt, violence, and alcoholism. Beta'd by the lovely paperheartsplasticroses (of tumblr) who was my cheerleader, my grammar corrector, and pronoun clarify-er.

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><p>John Watson spent a lot of time staring at his thin red thread. It wrapped so perfectly around his left ring finger before cutting through the air and disappearing past his bedroom window. Or shooting off through the trees at the park. Or through the wall at school. But he only stared when others couldn't see.<p>

It wasn't that John was afraid of his thread. In fact, he asked his mother as much about the threads as he could, and hung onto every word, committing it to memory. There was a lot for John to learn about these threads, especially when he was younger.

They connect you to the person you're meant to be with.

They cannot be broken.

Anyone, absolutely anyone, can be on the other side of your thread. And they could be from anywhere.

Sometimes, some very sad times, a person never gets to see who they are connected to.

When John learned that a thread could turn from red to black, he knew that he had to meet his connected as soon as possible, just in case. After school he would sometimes ditch his older sister Harry and say he was going to his friend's house to play video games. But in reality, he would chase after this thread through the small town of Sutton to see if he could find who was on the other end. Usually when John started to feel hungry, he would give up and return home, but sometimes he would stay out until long after the sun went down, which would certainly end up in a grounding. In the back of his ten-year-old mind he knew he probably wasn't going to find the person on the end, but he always felt adventurous when he was following his outstretched arm in the general northern direction his thread always seemed to point.

When John turned fifteen, Harry found Clara and he never heard the end of it. Harry was twenty and thought she knew everything. She thought that finding her connected meant her life was sorted, even though she was barely scraping through university and was picking up her father's habit of drinking. Clara was very nice, though, and John got along with her well enough that he could put up with Harry's gushing. He was happy for Harry, really, and it only made him more determined to find his connected.

One day in the spring after he turned sixteen, John took the train to London, figuring that was as good a place as any to start looking. When he found himself standing in front of the Anteros statue staring at his thread still pointing due North, he feared his connected was further away than he'd imagined. What if he had to go to Scotland? Or even the Arctic? That was a thought! He would do it, though, John told himself as he stood in front of the winged memorial. He would go as far as he had to.

He figured he might as well see London since he was there. John had always thought about moving to London when he was finished with school and living on his own. He had never actually been, except once when he was four, when his mum had taken him and Harry away for the weekend while his father got rather intimately acquainted with a bottle of Gordon's. Everything was much bigger than he had remembered, dirtier, more beautiful. People were milling about, paying no one else any mind, rushing to work, off on a date. It was all fantastic.

He spent most of the day walking. He saw Ben, the Eye, Parliament; he even found a blue police box and laughed quietly to himself while wishing he had a camera. He visited St. Bart's hospital, somewhere he was looking to attend after sixth form. John had decided he wanted to be a doctor after helping patch up a friend's rugby injury and being forced to care for his father once his mother left.

John spent so much time looking around London that he hadn't realised his thread had traveled West, then South, then a bit East. He finally noticed the change in direction when he left a souvenir shop with a shirt for Harry and a hat for Clara and he took to the pavement at a run, darting past pedestrians and skirting through a crossroads just as the lights changed. His connected could be anywhere, but he'd be damned if he was going to let that stop him from running across London to find her. Or him.

Finding his connected proved more difficult than he imagined. John found himself changing direction about every ten minutes, and couldn't fathom what the person on the other end was doing running around the streets of London. He ran into people, was nearly flattened by a bus, and almost angered the wrong sort of stray dog as he chased his thread. The thread stopped moving direction for a while, and John almost thought he'd reached the end but saw it heading towards the direction of Kings Cross just as he rounded the corner of a public swimming pool building.

_Do they just not see their thread?_ John thought to himself as he raced towards the station, hoping to catch whoever was on the other end before they boarded their train. After actually managing to piss off another dog, who was luckily on a leash, John bolted through the entrance of Kings Cross just as his thread was beginning to move North.

"Oh, wonderful." John leaned against the wall for a bit to catch his breath. _Do they just not care? We were right here. We could have... Maybe they didn't notice. They were moving around an awful lot._ When John was rested, he purchased a ticket for Sutton and headed home. He wouldn't sleep well for two weeks.

After John finished school, he attended The University of London at St. Bart's and the London School of Medicine. There he met Mike Stamford, and the two of them joined a local rugby league together and quickly became fast friends. John was in top form at Bart's. He favoured studying over partying, and his time not on the rugby pitch was spent in the library with his nose in a book. John almost felt that if he worked hard and did well in school, maybe... maybe him not having found his connected wouldn't be such a bad thing. He did, however, continue to stare at his thread every night. He kept wondering if his connected would come to London again.

If he or she did, John wouldn't let them get away so easily again.

Harry and Clara married soon after John started school. They were happy, it seemed to John, and he was happy for them. It had him thinking, however, about what he wanted from his life. Did he want to settle down? Did he want to go chasing across England to find his connected, or wait till they found each other? Did he want to focus on the other opportunities before him, such as a military career or specialising?

The rest of uni was a blur. Study groups meshed with rugby practice meshed with the occasional and hesitant night out at the pub meshed with getting mixed up in fights between Clara and Harry. John didn't know how the last one happened, but it did several times. Once, it even ended with Harry crashing at John's flat for a week to sort things out. His strict no booze policy specifically created for Harry was of course ignored by its intended and she spent most of her visit incoherent.

"If you would just put down the bottle..." John pleaded with his sister, who was in the process of pouring another glass of whisky. Harry could down the hardest like it was tea, it seemed sometimes. "This...this is why Clara kicked you out." Harry yelled at him that she left of her own accord and John just shook his head, muttering an empty affirmative.

John forced Harry back home after six days, but Harry and Clara's relationship didn't get much better. By the time John had graduated, Harry had driven away nearly everyone who wasn't family. He felt for Clara, he really did. John liked Clara, and knew she deserved better than the way Harry was treating her. But divorce between connected's was still a little taboo. Clara didn't know what to do, and John, well, John didn't want to be the one stuck taking care of Harry if Clara left. And he knew she would, in time.

After a few years of residency, still at Barts, and with no break from getting stuck in the middle of Harry and Clara's fights, John was desperate to get away from it all. He knew there was one place, at least, he could still use his medical practice to help people while escaping from his own life, from reality.

The army.

It's a shame no one told John just how cruel reality in the army would be.

It started out simple enough. ATR was as he expected, grueling but nothing he couldn't handle. There he met Bill Murray, whom everyone would poke fun of for being named like the film star, and who was a nurse and was with John for most of his medical training. John also met several others that would join him in the 5th Northumberland Fusiliers when training finished, such as Wilfred 'Wilf' Wood and Derek Kinne.

Their first few tours were lacking in action, and consisted of them working various jobs on base or escorting other regiments from one zone to another. After about five years, however, they were paired with the 1st Bangalore Pioneers, one of the last remaining regiments of the British Indian Army. It was a bit unorthodox, pairing these two up in a place like Afghanistan, but they meshed fairly well. The Pioneers were lead by Brigadier Jase Pike, a large, intimidating man with no hair, and Colonel Sebastian Moran, who was a small man and a sharp shot.

About a year into their partnership the two regiments were stationed in Sangin, a remote district of Helmand. It was a dangerous part of Afghanistan, and the insurgent presence had gone from occupying against the Afghan government's wishes to kidnappings, bombings, murders, and raids. The Fusiliers and the Pioneers were supposed to quell the violence going on.

But the insurgents were waiting for them when they arrived. As soon as they rolled into the trenches, the Fusiliers and the Pioneers were fighting to survive. Something had gone wrong, something had gone terribly wrong. The men they were fighting against seemed to know their every move. _Comms must have been hacked and transmissions intercepted_, John thought to himself as he and Murray bolted to a hole to set up the medical supplies that were already needed. It was raining hellfire. All that seemed to be missing was the brimstone. Kinne was on the ground above and it looked like his left foot was twisted around the wrong way with shrapnel in it. But the Colonel in John's hands was currently in danger of bleeding out, and much higher on his priority list.

"C'mon, Moran. Hang in there. If you quit on me now, your Brigadier will have my head. And he's a scary man." Moran just gritted his teeth as John wiped an iodine covered rag over the hole in his side. "Alright. Alright. C'mon. This is gonna hurt. Nothing like that bullet did, though." John flushed the wound, a through and through that just barely seemed to miss any vital organs, with a mixture of water and bacitracin. The Colonel bit his blood-drenched jacket sleeve to keep from screaming. Some quick suturing that would most certainly need to be redone in hospital, and a rush bandage job, and John was on his way to drag Kinne to his little set up in the hole.

They were ten feet out when he heard his name being called through the tall grass. That'll be Wilf, John thought, pausing only to turn and lift a hand to indicate he'd heard. Wilf had a head wound, but those always looked worse than they were. Nothing a bandage wouldn't cover. He motioned for him to keep running, get out of the line of fire. C'mon Wilf, you're target practice out there.

It happened in slow motion. John was turned, lowering himself into the hole after Kinne and facing the action, the destruction. Bullets and shells were screaming past everyone. Wilf was ducked down, trying to minimise himself as a target. But John and Wilf both saw the man in the grass at the same time. They both saw the artillery shell headed towards the unsuspecting soldier. Wilf's eyes met John's one last time, and his face had a determined, almost apologetic look on it, before he was diving on the ground, knocking the soldier, a man called Jameson from their own regiment, out of the blast range. Wilf had just enough time to close his eyes and lay his head back in resignation before the shell exploded in a rain of sand and grass and fire.

"WILF! NO, WILF! Dammit!" And it took Murray and someone from the Pioneers to drag John back down to the hole. Kinne was going to lose his foot if he didn't act fast. John needed to focus. Focus. Wilf was gone. He couldn't do anything about that. But he could save Kinne. He could protect the wounded. Focus.

He wasn't mentally present while he extracted the shrapnel, set Kinne's foot, cleaned, and bandaged the wound. His skin felt numb, his insides on fire. If he were any other man, his hands would be shaking. Wilf's face kept burning itself into the back of his eyelids every time he blinked. His instant resignation to do what he needed to do. Not a second thought. _Wilf, you bastard_. Some poor girl back home, Dana, had just had to watch her thread go abruptly from a warm red to a harsh black. John would tell her what Wilf did. He would explain it all in a letter, Wilf's heroism.

A shell landing six feet to the left of the hole the medics were in tore John back to reality. This ambush was getting nasty. Nastier. He could hear enemy chatter getting closer to the hole. Of course. Take the wounded. They make for better prisoners. You can dangle them in front of cameras for your purpose and then claim they died from their wounds after you shoot them in between the eyes.

Well, not on John Watson's watch. Just a look between him, Murray, and the few Pioneers who could stand and shoot and they were scrambling for the edge of the hole with their weapons, aiming for anyone who wasn't British. Two of the Pioneers went down within three minutes. Murray stopped to help them, leaving Watson and only two others defending the hole. Not good enough.

The insurgents came in from behind, through the breach in the fire. There had to be only eight of them, but since most of the soldiers around were already injured, John felt more than outnumbered. He watched as the insurgents went straight for Kinne and Moran. His insides were still on fire and were fast turning to rage. John had already lost one friend, he wasn't going to lose another. He dropped the rifle he'd been carrying, pulled the Browning from his belt, and rammed the enemy soldier that had just placed a gun to Kinne's head. John pinned the soldier on the ground and placed a bullet through his chest. When he turned, John saw Moran being pulled from the hole and didn't think. He just ran. He scaled the ladder and charged after them, releasing round two, three, four from his pistol. He could hear Murray yelling behind him.

"Sebastian!" They were getting farther. His leg. Why was his leg hurting? _Am I hit? Fuck. Slowing me down._ The falter was all it took. The hitch in John's step distracted him enough for the kidnappers to take the chance and shoot.

John Watson's world erupted in an explosion of fire and blood and rage. He could barely register Murray screaming his name as he fell to the ground feeling like his whole left side had been blown off.

When he awoke, John was surprised to find he was in pain. He didn't think you could feel pain in the afterlife. Maybe it was residual. Maybe when he opened his eyes and made his mind realise where he was it would go away.

The blinding white lights that greeted him above almost hurt as much as his shoulder and leg did.

"Guess I'm not dead." John shut his eyes once more, spots and stars dancing behind his eyelids.

"Don't sound too disappointed, Johnny boy!" Murray. Well, nice to know he made it out alright too.

"Kinne make it?" John was stalling. He didn't want to look at his left side. He didn't want to feel his left side. Was it even still there? _I bet I'm missing a bloody arm._

"Oh, could anything take Kinne out? Foot's going to be good as new thanks to you, Johnny." John could feel Murray's hand rumpling his hair and decided to give opening his eyes another go.

Just a crack, then a few awkward blinks, and then he forced his eyes to stay open and acclimate to the light. After a moment John turned to look at Murray.

"Y'look like shite." Murray had bags under his eyes that seemed to take up his whole face. His hair needed washing, and somehow he'd received a cut along his jaw that was starting to heal already. "How long have I been out?"

"Well you don't look too spiffy yourself, darling," Murray chuckled. "About a week. You lost a bunch of blood. Left you for dead, they did. Didn't think you were gonna make it, honestly. I think Wilf woulda taken you out the minute you got to the afterlife if you hadn't." His face dropped a bit at the mention of Wilf, as did John's. He still needed to write that letter.

"My arm?" John still didn't want to look. He could see the bandages around his shoulder in his peripheral, but they could be wrapped around a stump for all he knew. Or maybe it was still there and he couldn't move it anymore and it was just a useless limb.

"Will be right as rain. Looked like it had been blown clean off, to tell you the truth. But just a through and through in your shoulder was all it was." John finally turned his head to look at the bandages. His arm was numb, but that was most likely from the pain killers. He tried to wiggle his fingers, and watched as they waved back at him. "You'll have a nasty scar, but you know how girls feel about battle wounds, eh?" John rolled his eyes, but offered Murray an empty smile in return.

John was in the hospital another week. After he wrote the letter to Wilf's girl, explaining his actions fully and how Wilf was a true hero, John spent most of his time staring at his thread. It really hadn't moved all that much during John's time in Afghanistan. He was too disoriented to think about the proper angle and where it was pointed at, but he liked to think maybe it was towards London. John didn't know what he would do if he met his connected now, however. He had started having nightmares. His shoulder was healing but the doctors couldn't find an explanation for the leg. Aside from Murray or Kinne, John didn't want to talk to anyone. He couldn't stop thinking about Wilf or Moran. They were lost, gone. He should have been lost too.

A letter that was delivered the day before he was to be discharged detailed what he would do when he returned home. He was going to be given honourable discharge, a small pension, and was set up with a weekly appointment with a therapist. John gave a bitter smile when he read that. _Great. What makes the Army think I'm going to talk to a therapist in London if I won't talk to anyone here?_

John was shipped home with Murray, Kinne, and a few others who had been wounded in battle. When they arrived, it was early morning in London. Harry had taken the liberty of finding him a small flat for when he got back, and he was suspicious of her behaviour. After a bit of prodding while they were gathering his few possessions from storage, Harry revealed that she and Clara had officially split. When Harry had heard John was shot and in critical condition, she went on a bender, and broke a vase. Clara had told her that it was the last straw, and she was leaving. Harry thought that maybe cleaning herself up would bring Clara back. John personally wondered just how long his sister would stay clean. This was not a good start to his homecoming.

When John settled in after his return to London, he found he was a different man. He didn't go out. He didn't find any of his old mates. He didn't make plans. He sat on his bed most of the day, or at his computer. His therapist encouraged him to write a blog, but he honestly had nothing to write about. He went to the store to buy groceries every week, and sometimes he would cut through the park if the day was nice. That was it.

At night, John would lie on his bed and look at his thread, following the path it took with his eyes. _Whoever is on the other end could be in London_, he thought. John could watch the thread go three hundred and sixty degrees in the span of an hour, so he had to be close to his connected. Some nights, the ex-soldier couldn't sleep much at all because of painful, terrifying, disorienting nightmares. On these nights, John would just sit, and watch, and wonder who it could be that would go roaming around London at all hours of the day and night. The little boy he used to be was a bit sad that he didn't try to go out and find the other end of the thread. Surely once someone has reached their thirties they should want to find their connected. Right?

The only reason John didn't go looking for his connected was because he was broken. His shoulder had been shot to ribbons and he had a limp that his therapist wasn't quite sure was real. He had no motivation to do anything, to meet anyone. He didn't talk. Who would want to be around someone who couldn't find a word to say, or was barely even able make it to Tesco each week for fear of social interaction? His connected would take one look at him and run away, probably. He wouldn't be wanted.

John kept his military-issued handgun after leaving the service. It wasn't legal, strictly speaking, but if he were honest with himself the law wouldn't be an issue for very much longer.

The thought had occurred to him as he was lying in the army hospital in Afghanistan. Of course it did. John witnessed one of his best mates from ATR getting blown to smithereens, and was shot while unsuccessfully trying to protect a fellow soldier from being captured. The bullet had ripped a hole the size of an orange through the back of his shoulder, with the front not looking any better, and for some reason John couldn't figure out his leg ached with a phantom pain that had nothing to do with any sort of real injury. He knew he couldn't stay in Afghanistan with such severe problems, but going home either meant taking care of Harry and her drinking or living by himself. He had joined the army to escape the first option, and now that he was being sent home he couldn't really afford the second.

So when John left, he kept his gun. Just in case.

Each night he would jolt awake screaming and twisted in his sheets, and each time when he lay back down he would look towards the top drawer of his desk before turning his eyes onto his left hand and following the movement of his thread. Sometimes he felt sorry for his connected, felt bad for what he was considering, but then he would think to himself that it was probably better he or she would never meet the broken ex-army doctor who couldn't be fixed.

Christmas was a sad excuse for a holiday that year. He visited Harry, who wasn't doing so well since her most recent separation with Clara, and made sure to throw out any booze he could find in her apartment. John and Harry had never got on very well, but their relationship only went downhill once his sister picked up his father's old drinking habits while she was in uni. He'd spent the years before St. Bart's taking care of his father; he didn't want to be Harry's nurse too. They spent the New Year together as well, but that proved more than he could handle once Harry got her hands on a bottle of gin.

After New Years, John didn't know what to do. The holidays were out of the way and Harry would be preoccupied with alcohol for the next good month or two, until she would try to turn sober again for three weeks out of guilt. It was always the same cycle. He tried to find a job, but he had no motivation to follow up on any of the calls he'd received for interviews. He still hadn't called any of his old mates to tell them he'd come back.

John had begun noticing stories in the paper about serial suicides going on, and how some reporters thought they might be murders. _Which were they – suicides or murders? If they were suicides, those people were smart. Poison would be a nice way to go. A lot cleaner than a bullet in the brain. No blood stains on the carpet._ John's nonchalance thinking about suicide would have worried him, but the idea had been in the back of his mind for months. It was no surprise he would start thinking about it more when these cases began showing up during his daily routine of reading the paper.

Routine. John's life had become very routine. Having nightmares, going to his therapist, going to the shops, staring at his blog or the paper for hours on end. His world was turning into shades of grey and he didn't know how to stop it. The only colour seemed to be the brown sand and red blood that he would see every night before his eyes opened and a scream ripped through his chest.

What has my life become? He would think to himself as images of bullets and colourful vials with skulls on them danced through his mind. It's not really much of a life anymore at all.

Life has a funny way of proving to people their deepest assumptions, whether they're actually true or not. John's grey world was abruptly interrupted with screaming red in the form of Harry Watson begging him to help her over the phone. Clara had sent over divorce papers two days before and was to pick them up that afternoon. Harry, true to form, had rather decided she'd much prefer to get friendly with a bottle of Jameson.

"No, Harry! This is the last time I will tell you. I am not your keeper." John was angry, the most he'd been since returning from Afghanistan. "I've tried to help you in the past, but you're worse than dad. You never listen to any reason, and I have my own problems to deal with." It took all he had to not fling the phone out his window. "I can't keep taking care of you!" That's what Clara was for, and you've gone run her off. It's your own fault.

"John, John please. This is the last time, I swear. Just-" Her words were slurred and she was speaking too loudly over the phone. Harry had hit a low point.

"No! It's half three and you're pissed! I wouldn't be surprised if you'd finished the entire bottle by now." He couldn't take it. John hung up the phone to Harry beginning to scream at him. Why was it his job to take care of her? Why did she have to make him feel like a terrible person when he refused to be her baby sitter? She was a grown woman, she was five years older then he was. He shouldn't be responsible for taking care of her.

It was too much. He felt guilty for about ten different reasons, he was angry for four, and felt broken for a million more.

The action was automatic. As John stood from the stiff pre-furnished chair in his living room and crossed to his bedroom, his skin felt numb, while his insides were on fire. His mind was fuzzy and he was developing tunnel vision. It was as if a fever had taken over his whole body. John gripped the edges of his desk and stared at the vinyl wood grain pattern for five minutes, willing the dizziness in his head to go away. His leg was on fire, and he would have ripped it off with his bare hands if he hadn't a better idea in mind that would end the pain, all of his pain, permanently.

His movement was stuttered as he reached a hand down to the top drawer and slid it open. John shuffled through the stacks of paper and dug under his laptop until his fingers found the cool metal handle of the Browning. Lifting it out of the drawer, John dropped the gun on the desk and stared at it as if it might come alive and shoot him of its own accord.

John wished it would.

He gripped the edge of the desk once more, his knuckles turning white. All he could see was the gun. The way out. The escape from his pain, from his sister, from his terrible therapist, from his nightmares, from his...life.

All it would take was a pull of that trigger. An inch of metal and then 9mm more.

John placed one hand on the gun, but it took him three more minutes before he could wrap his fingers around the handle, lift it up off the vinyl wood grain of the desk. One inch of metal and then 9mm more, and it would be over.

_Harry might drink herself to death_, John thought, but simply grimaced as he straightened his back. _Only expediting the inevitable_.

_What about my connected?_ John lowered the gun a few inches and looked at his thread, currently making its way East. _Would it even matter? They're better off not knowing me. I'm just cracked and worthless and crippled._

His hand was steady as he lifted the gun to its place. The barrel tasted like metal and fire, if such a taste existed. John's finger caressed the trigger. He'd done this before, many times. Only the target wasn't his own flesh, as it was now. He had to close his eyes. He couldn't watch it happen.

A noise from the other room. His phone.

_Ignore it Watson._

Clara's ringtone. Clara wouldn't call unless...

_Harry._

The gun hit the vinyl wood grain with a clatter as John rushed to the living room to grab his phone before Clara hung up.

"Clara, yes, hello. Is everything alright?"

Harry was getting into her car as Clara drove up to her house. Drunk.

"But...Why?"

To see John. To beg him to help her. Christ.

"I'll...I'll be over in twenty." The Browning can wait until tomorrow.

John stayed the night at Harry's. He held his sister as she cried into his arms. He listened to her as she apologized endlessly about her behavior. Listened to her empty promises to stop drinking, once and for all. He and Clara took turns looking over her once she passed out in her bed. It was rough. It made John's leg hurt. He couldn't keep doing this any more. This is why he wanted to... Just a bump in the road. A delay. Rest stop. His escape was still waiting for him on the vinyl wood grain of his desk.

Clara was gone when he woke up around nine the next morning. John cursed himself for letting her get away first. His back hurt from the sofa, and skin still felt a little numb. He just wanted to get home. To get away. He checked on Harry, sleeping soundly in her bed, before he left, deciding to walk back as the day was nice and the park would be a good shortcut.

He didn't plan on running into Mike Stamford. He was so lost in his thoughts, it took Mike two times calling his name out for John to turn around. Its fine. Just another delay. Coffee would be nice anyway.

John would say it was nice catching up with his old friend from school, but it wasn't. It only reminded him of what he'd become, how he was so different from who he was when he attended Barts. Mike was still at Barts, teaching. John could do that if he wanted. He'd hate it, though.

"Staying in town till you get yourself sorted?" _Well, you could put it that way._

"Can't afford London on an army pension." A better answer than John's real thoughts.

"Ah, you couldn't bear to be anywhere else. That's not the John Watson I know." _Well, it's been over eight years since I've seen you. I've changed._

"I'm not the John Watson you..." _No. It's too much. I can't let him know. That would just make it harder. _

"Couldn't Harry help?" John couldn't help but laugh. What an absurd thought.

"Yeah, like that's going to happen." Seeing as Harry was currently blacked out to the world and all its problems, John didn't see her being much help at all.

That's when Mike suggested a flatshare. John almost smiled. A flatshare? With him? A broken soldier who only left his apartment to take care of his drunk sister?

"Come on. Who'd want me for a flatmate?" And Mike was chuckling to himself. Why was that funny? "What?"

"You're the second person to say that to me today." Mike was smiling to himself like he was some sort of damn matchmaker or something.

"Who was the first?" And just like that, Mike was whisking John away to St. Barts to meet this mystery flatmate.

John couldn't say no. Maybe this would work out? It could be the sort of distraction from his pain he was looking for. He hadn't high hopes though. If it didn't work out, then well, it was just another delay, wasn't it? And he could get right back home to the Browning waiting on his desk.

Barts was different. Upgraded. Computers and machines whirring about covered in touch screens and lights. Much different than when John was a student. Mike felt the need to give John a little tour, delaying this flatmate matchmaking a bit, perhaps to build up suspense. John was antsy. He wanted to meet the guy and get on with it. It wasn't until Mike was taking him down to one of the labs that John noticed his thread. It was straight before him, heading through the door they were about to open.  
><em><br>Could it..._ __

_No_ __

_But what if..._ __

_Do I want to meet this person? Here? Now? When yesterday I almost..._

But Mike was herding him through the door before he could protest.

"Mike, I need to borrow your phone. Mine doesn't have any signal down here."

John looked for the voice, deep, curt. The man was lost in the mess of test tubes and beakers piled on the table, hidden behind a microscope. But his hand was outstretched, waiting for the phone Mike was patting himself down for.

John couldn't miss the red thread that started in a perfect loop around the man's ring finger, and traveled ten feet across the room to his own hand that he was now lifting up. He gasped. He couldn't believe it. It was his connected. The glowing thread was a breach of red in the grey his world had become, and from it, colour was now seeping back into place.

The man lifted his gaze from the microscope at John's intake of breath. His eyes traveled the ten feet of thread to rest on John's hand, before moving up to lock gazes. He was...otherworldly. John never, not for one instance, thought he would look across to his connected and see the combination of curls and angles and cheekbones and _tall_ that was on the end of his thread. The man was beautiful.

But it wasn't just aesthetics. John had never thought about how much he would need to see who he was connected to. He never thought his connected would want to take a second glance at John. But the look in the man's eerily pale eyes was unmistakable: He needed John just as much as John needed him.

John's heart was pounding, his grip on his cane was painful. _Go_, he told himself. _This is much better than the gun._

"John. John Watson." And his mouth stretched into a smile of its own accord as he limped his way over to the god-like statue that was his connected. John didn't notice Mike shuffling quietly out of the lab. He was transfixed, watching the thread shrink as the gap between him and his connected was closed; each step he took was like following a path to salvation, and for the first time in years he felt truly alive.

"Sherlock Holmes," the man said. In the back of his mind, John thought, _Sherlock, what a name_. And they clasped each other's hands, and the thin red thread between them was nothing and everything at the same time as finally, after years and years of searching, John Watson finally caught his connected. His Sherlock.


End file.
